


where do we go but nowhere

by 2bee



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: I abandoned this work I'm sorry!, M/M, Minor Character Death, Parentlock, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-26
Updated: 2014-06-20
Packaged: 2017-12-24 18:44:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/943364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2bee/pseuds/2bee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Harry dies, John inherits a daughter. As if this isn't shock enough, his best friend returns from the dead nine weeks later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

She sits in a chair far too big for her with a stuffed giraffe in her lap. Her feet dangle eight inches off the ground.

John sits down across from her, hands folded. They stay like that for a while, just watching. John sighs.

Emma sighs too, her arms wrapping more tightly around her giraffe. Her eyes are red. She looks like her mother.

*

One week before, John had been adjusting his appearance in the bathroom mirror, straightening his shirt collar and thinking about the three topics that Harry was bound to bring up on this weekend’s prospective lunch date:

  1. The fact that he now had a mustache (“fuck me, John, you can’t be serious”).
  2. How bad traffic always made her want a drink (“lighten up, a glass of wine at lunch isn’t going to send me off the wagon”).
  3. That Emma’s physical and intellectual growth was simultaneously beautiful and terrifying (“if I didn’t love her so much, I’d be in the throes of the worst existential crisis of my life. Might be anyway, come to think of it”).



He smirked to himself, thinking about it. Dusty brown hair, like his. Murky blue eyes. Looking at Harry was like looking at himself, but delicate, and there was comfort in that. True, he never exactly _enjoyed_ his lunches with her – ‘enjoy’ wasn’t the right word – but he felt a tug of obligation to keep in touch, as she was the last living family he had, and even he had to admit that he could use the company.

The thought made him clear his throat and duck away from his reflection, unable to look himself in the eye. That was the worst thing, about death: it snuck up on you. Morbid jokes and vagrant memories – things too horrible to think about escaping his subconscious at all the unexpected moments. One good thing about Harry is that if he didn’t mention Clara, she wouldn’t mention Sherlock; they’d rib each other incessantly about their mundane lives for an hour or two, leave knowing they both had secrets, and that would be the end of that.

He was actually entertaining the idea of telling Harry about his upstairs neighbor – he could do with the good-natured ribbing that would come out of that one. He’d just found himself a new flat two months ago, cheaper and a bit further out of town.  There was a small, spare bedroom and just enough room for somebody living alone. It came furnished. He barely had to take anything with him.

He had one neighbor upstairs, a woman and her young son, from what he could gather, and one day he’d run into her at the door. She was pretty. Friendly face, freckles, ski jump nose, hair like milk chocolate. John supposes he should have done better to try and read more from her appearance, but he’d always been rather bad at it. And he found when he tried, he tended to look like some sort of leering pervert, so he stuck with eye contact and noticing the faint scent of her shampoo.

“Oh, hello,” she’d said, putting her key in their lock. “I was wondering when I’d run into the new tenant. I’ve been meaning to bring down food – a casserole, or something, housewarming, you know, but I—”

“It’s perfectly fine,” John had said, his heart feeling just a bit lighter for the first time in months. “I’m John. John Watson.” They stepped into the entryway.

John should have known from the look on her face that he’d reached a dangerous point already, but he was hopeful enough to let her start. She looked up towards the ceiling, as if she’d written her memory on it. “John… say, you’re not the John Watson that—”

“No.” He felt the back of his neck begin to flush and he took a step backwards. “Sorry, I’m—just John Watson.”

His neighbor, for all the world, had _smiled._ “Alright then. Nice to meet you, just John Watson.” And with that, she made her way up the stairs.

John had called a half-hearted “see you around!” up at her retreating back, but she didn’t seem to hear him. He kicked himself for the next twenty minutes, alone in his flat, feeling like the biggest idiot that ever walked this Earth. He could have just let her get her sentence out. It really wouldn’t have been so bad to close his eyes and gently say, _‘yes.’_

Yes. So he could use a good lecture from Harry. Exasperated, annoyed, overzealous – just enough to convince him that he should stop being a sod and talk to people like he wasn’t some alien race recently endowed with the gift of speech and a very sensitive temper. He can hear her now, speaking through bites of her turkey club: “you’re telling me that you don’t even know her _name?”_

Perhaps he will shave off his mustache.

But the call came late that night. A bit past midnight, long after he’d forgotten what he’d occupied his mind with that morning.

“Doctor Watson?”

“Yeah, speaking.” He was sitting at his kitchen table, doing a crossword. 16 across, ten letters: “Christie’s lady.”

“Your sister has been in an accident,” says the voice on the other end of the line. “She is currently in critical condition. We are doing everything we can.”

John feels half of his body panic, full stop, his heart going to his throat and his left hand shaking— but the other half is still calm, not hearing a word, gently whirring. It figures out the crossword clue. The answer is ‘Miss Marple.’

“What? Where are— _what?”_

“We believe she was driving home,” the voice says, as if this is supposed to explain things. “Her BAC level was above .2. That means—”

“I know what it means.”  He’s a doctor, they _know_ he’s a doctor; they should know that he knows what it means. “But is she going to be alright? We have a lunch date planned Sunday.” _Critical condition._

There’s silence on the line for far too long. Isn’t there a protocol for these sort of things, a script they’re supposed to follow? Surely silences this long aren’t in the hospital’s policy. “I’m so sorry, Doctor Watson.”

He imagines Harry asking for a second glass of wine at lunch. Red, she always preferred red.

 _“Don’t worry,”_ he can hear her telling him from across the table. _“I’m just taking the edge off. You’re so bloody neurotic; you act like every sip I take is going to kill me. Let me worry about my life, you worry about yours.”_

“Doctor Watson, are you still there? Doctor Watson?”

“Yes, I’m—I’m right here. Sorry. I’m here.”

“We have one other matter to discuss.”

*

He borrows a 4x4 from Ted Phelps, an army friend he calls because he can’t fathom talking to anybody else. Ted had always been quiet, he doesn’t ask any questions. John shows up at Ted’s to pick up the keys and all Ted says is, “I hope you get to where you’re going. Try not to scratch it.”

John nods, and says he’ll try.

He spends the entire ride to Sussex trying not to think about things, trying not to let his hands shake. They shake anyway. He occupies himself with how he’s going to sell the house, what he’s willing to move into his own flat, how much they’ll be able to fit in the back of the pick-up. Anything not to think about everything else.

*

When John arrives, Emma hides behind chairs to avoid talking to him. She’s packed up all of her most prized possessions into boxes and marked them with an arrow cut out of construction paper, save a stuffed giraffe, which she’s carrying with her. John peers into her room and finds it mostly empty, save a few posters of some boy band still plastered to the wall. He loads her boxes two at a time into the car and goes to find her under the couch, where she’s shoved herself. He smiles at her.

“I’ve put all your things into the car.”

Emma doesn’t look him in the eye, rather studies the pattern of the carpet. “Just tell me when we’re ready to go.”

John understands that feeling. “Okay,” he says, trying to crouch down to get on her level, his hands on his knees. “Okay. I’ll just… I’ll come and get you.”

She nods. She doesn’t move from her hiding place.

An assortment of Harry’s neighbors flutter about the house and help him pack, a few attempt to offer their condolences but John gives them sharp, cold looks that cut their pity short. He doesn’t need condolences. He doesn’t need to hear how sorry they are that life’s so unfortunate.

He finds things of Harry’s he never knew she still had, including an old photo album he finds among Emma’s things that he feels guilty for looking at. It’s awful, but it feels too personal. Like he wasn’t enough of a part of her life to have permission to look at it.

He kicks everybody out when he finds Harry’s wine stash, finding a false panel in one of the cupboards. He holds a bottle of pinot noir and just stares at it, turning it over and over in his hands, reading every inch of the label.

*

Even after John’s finished moving the necessary belongings into the back of the 4x4, it takes them an additional hour to leave. John just starts walking around the rooms under the guise of making sure he’s packed everything and he can’t stop, looking at everything, touching things, tracing his fingers along the edge of the toaster. She’d probably touched this. Every morning, for breakfast. She had liked jam on toast, like he did.

Then he had to coax Emma out from under the sofa and walk her around the house, holding her hand. She said goodbye to every room, touching different things. She whispered things into her giraffe’s ear at certain points, like standing in Mummy’s closet, in the downstairs hall, and in front of the refrigerator. John decides that it’s best not to ask.

They’re silent in the car: John tries valiantly to ask her a few questions about school, and her favorite colour, but they both know that he sounds like kind of a prat. How are you supposed to talk to children?

After ten minutes of silence, she says: “When Wendy died, Mum and I put her in a shoebox and buried her in the back garden.”

John taps his fingers on the wheel, pursing his lips. “Who’s Wendy?” John is unsure if he’s asking out of annoyance or genuine curiosity. It’s odd, having someone so small sitting in the front seat. She’s still clutching the stuffed giraffe. John wonders if she should be in the back, or something, because that’s safer.

Emma raises her eyebrows as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “My goldfish.”

Apparently deeming the conversation over, Emma turns to her left and rolls down the window. She sticks her small arm out, letting it be blown about by the wind.

“I’m sorry,” John says, and the ludicrousness of the statement in light of recent events is not lost on him, “about your goldfish.”

“It’s okay. She was just a fish.”

“Right,” John says, feeling like a complete twat. An eight-year-old has a better handle on loss than he does. “Right.”

*

Clara finds him at the funeral. Emma has tied her hair back with a thick black ribbon, but the bow is messy and lopsided because John had no idea how to do it, and even after looking it up on the internet, his left hand shook too much.

“It’s okay,” Emma had said, looking at the unsatisfactory bow in the mirror. “I think it looks fine.”

John cleared his throat. “You look very pretty.” Half Harry, half someone else. But Harry raised her. She doesn’t have Harry’s thin lips, but she holds her mouth in the same way.

She smoothed her hair down in the mirror, played with the ruffle of her dress. “I don’t need to look pretty.”

John smiled, because it was so familiar. “I know.”

Clara and John watch her for a moment, standing at her mother’s grave, kicking at the dirt. She keeps checking over her shoulder, as if waiting for a moment when no one is watching. John wants to say something about how his heart feels too big and too small at the same time, how scared he is, how he’s worried about an eight-year-old dealing with death when he can’t do it at thirty-seven.

But Clara speaks first. “So you’re saddled with Emma?”

Her word choice throws him off. “I—yeah, I am.”

“Probably for the best. You know how she was.”

The shoulders and collar of John’s suit suddenly feel just slightly too tight. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Clara rolls her eyes. “Don’t say we didn’t both see this coming. We warned her about this sort of thing ages ago.” John remembers when Harry had first announced she was pregnant, that she was making a major life change, that the insemination was successful and she would soon be a mother. She and Clara were on-again, but it hadn’t been a joint decision. John and Clara had hovered in a corner of a Christmas party, talking in low voices about how terrible an idea it was. How Harry was prone to impulsive, life-changing choices, how John and Clara dreaded knowing they would have to be the ones picking up the pieces. They’d always said things like that, talking behind her back about her drinking problem, her lack of responsibility. John, remembering it, felt almost sick.

“We were _right,”_ she continues on, as if this is some great triumph and should be celebrated. “We were right, and here we are, picking up the pieces, just like we always said.”

“Sorry,” John says, not sorry in the least, “but I don’t see you picking up any pieces at all.”

“Now John, don’t be like that, it’s just—”

“I can’t believe you’re saying this,” John says, hands balling themselves into fists. “Now, of all times.”

“I’m not trying to be a bitch about it, I’m just saying—”

“Frankly, I don’t care what you’re saying. Fuck off.”

Clara takes half a step back, chin going to her chest. She is wearing a long, black dress that reaches to her ankles and a knit shawl around her shoulders. She reaches out and tries to touch the tip of her fingers to John’s arm. “John,” and her voice is sickeningly placating, “I’m not trying to say I didn’t love her.”

Sidestepping Clara’s fingers, John surprises himself when his exhale comes out as a laugh.  Weak, high pitched. But he’s sick of it. He’s never been more sick of anything in his entire life. “Honestly, Clara? I don’t give a damn about what you’re trying to say.”

*

Harry used to babysit for the kids next door. They were obnoxious, spoiled little twats; Harry would shout at them and they would laugh at her, they’d fall out of trees and John would be the one that knelt at their feet, cleaning their cuts. The youngest boy had a whiny voice, a thick mop of dark hair, and an attitude. He’d try and kick John in the face whenever he came at him with antiseptic.

“I’d be a shit parent,” Harry had said one day, drinking one of their father’s beers and watching the boys chase after each other out the window after being covered in plasters and straightened away.

“Hm,” John had said, because he was twelve and he thought she was right, and he was mad that she was probably going to keep all the money.

*

A child’s things look out-of-place in his new flat. He’d done his best to keep himself from surrounding himself with old relics, his Spartan habits bleeding through from his military days. Now, he hates to admit it, the clutter reminds him of Baker Street, but with softer edges and brighter colours.

He affords the place with cheques from Mycroft, which arrive like clockwork on the fifteenth. Always just enough for rent, occasionally with an extra collection of pounds to cover the few small extravagances that John was just beginning to regret, unsure of how he was going to pay for it. Always the same word in the space for the memo: “Redress.”

He wishes he could rip up the cheques. Fold them neatly in half and tear them to the point of obliterated. But he can’t help it. His work isn’t steady enough for him to have the ability to tell Mycroft where he can shove his charity. He needs the money, especially now. He has a kid to worry about.

Thinking of her, he glances over from his place in the kitchen to watch as she clambers over his furniture, watching some tv program that looks like its main characters are talking grapes.

And then the sobering realization hits them that this is it: he and Emma. A daughter. The rest of his life.

And in one sudden rush he is _furious,_ unspeakably angry with no one to shout it at, because he didn’t ask for this, he didn’t sign up for a lifetime commitment, he didn’t sign up for bills and school and educational telly and preparing meals, and it’s _just like_ Harry, biting off more than she can chew on an impulse decision and leaving John to shoulder the responsibility he never asked to take. And she _left him._ She was one of the only things he had left and she _got drunk_ and she _left him._

But then:

Emma topples over the back of John’s armchair, somersaulting through the air and landing with a _thunk_ on her backside, in a perfect sitting position. She looks up at John with large, frightened eyes, as if she’s not sure if she should start crying, and when John gives her a reassuring smile, she starts to laugh.

Tears start rolling down her cheeks, but she’s laughing.

John crosses the room and scoops her into his arms – she’s heavy, and the weight immediately bothers his shoulder, but he tries not to care – and carries her around to the front of the armchair, where he deposits himself, her in his lap. He watches over her shoulder as the grapes (accompanied by a large assortment of animated fruits) make their way down a river in a raft. They have sickeningly cute voices. Emma watches, rapt, still crying.

Harry didn’t decide to have Emma on impulse. Harry didn’t decide to die.

She’d called John, before she made her big announcement. _Months_ before. She said she was thinking about having a kid. She said that she needed John’s advice: that Clara wasn’t someone she could rely upon, but John, _please_ , I need you.

He’d advised her against it. She’d gotten mad.

John called her back the next day. “If you go through with this,” he’d said, knowing he was going to regret it, “I’ll help you whenever you ask.”

Here she was, asking. Perhaps John should have wondered if Harry was the one _he_ left alone.

Emma falls asleep with her head on John’s shoulder. The glow of the telly illuminates them both long after they’ve both stopped watching it, and John carries her upstairs and lays her down in the bed in the guest room that now belongs to her. There she is, breathing. She thrashes fitfully for a moment before grabbing the blanket and pulling it closer to her, and then she settles. John stands, watching for a while. Emma is what he has left.

*

On Monday, he walks Emma to her new school. It’s only eight blocks away, which isn’t bad at all, barely a mile. Emma holds his hand on the way, taking it when they first crossed the street and not letting go. Strangely, this fills him with a small, satisfied sort of pride.

The building is large, old, made of brick. Her teacher, Ms. Wallace, is a kind woman of about sixty with kinky black hair. She compliments Emma on her giraffe.

Emma nods shyly, and hides her face in its long neck. “His name is Stamford.”

John raises his eyebrows at this, but doesn’t say anything. He makes sure Emma finds her seat and will be okay on her own for a little while, at this new school, and in a move that completely unseats him, she throws her arms around his neck. “Bye.”

John kisses her forehead, because that feels like the right sort of thing to do.

He takes a cab to work, but has barely prepared himself for the day when Sarah storms into his office.

“John,” she says, taking him squarely by the shoulders, “you’ve had a rough few years. Take another two weeks off, I’m begging you.”

“One week,” John says, and he’s alarmed to hear his own voice sound like it’s pleading.

_“Two.”_

*

John buys the generic brand of Coco Pops when he does the shopping. Emma throws a fit that gets milks and cereal all over John, the walls, the living room floor, and when he drags her to school forty minutes late, Ms. Wallace takes one look at him and doesn’t say a word.

*

John wakes up at three in the morning as abruptly as if he’d been shouted at. He lies in bed, staring upward, wondering if he’s had a nightmare that he can’t remember, when he hears the faint sound of Emma crying making its way through the walls.

He jumps out of bed, pulls on his robe, and jogs up the stairs to the guest room. Emma’s made it her own by throwing stuffed animals all over it, clustered in corners and piled by the closet and sitting around a miniature table, having tea.

Emma is sitting up in bed, light on, sobs unrestrained and awful, like a car wreck, as she flips through pages of her photo album.

When John walks in, she stops crying out of sheer shock. She hugs the photo album to her chest, so he can’t see.

“Emma,” John says, taking a step into the room. Trying to figure out where to begin.

“Go away!” Emma’s shouting, tears falling afresh, and her little hands shake against the album. “Leave me alone! I want my mum!” At this, she loses her head completely, and John doesn’t know what to do, he barely deals with children; she doesn’t want him anywhere near her but he can’t just _leave_ her, wailing like this—

He settles with sitting down on the end of the bed and putting his hand near her, if she wants it. She doesn’t. She cries and cries and John can feel himself panicking, his heart tightening in his chest, adrenaline enhancing his senses – but there’s nothing he can do. There’s nothing to sew up or bandage or set or replace. He feels as helpless as if someone’s dying. He’s got their wrist in his hands and there isn’t a pulse.

She calms herself down, hiccupping her way into exhaustion. He stays until she quiets herself completely and falls back asleep.

John teases the photo album out of her hands and can’t help but glance quickly at its contents as he closes it. A picture of Harry and Clara, when they were young. A picture of Emma blowing out candles on a birthday cake.

He slides the album back under the bed, turns off the lamp, and leaves the room. He can’t help but feel as though he could have handled that better.

*

The woman in the flat upstairs stops him on his way out.

“You know, Trevor’s been insisting that he’s been hearing someone his age in the flat downstairs. Until last night I told him it was all in his imagination. He’s always wanted a playmate next door.”

John blinks at her. Twice. She has rather a lot of freckles, looking at her up close.

“Yeah, she’s—” His tongue trips over himself. He makes indeterminate vowel founds for far too long before finally settling on, “Her name is Emma. She’s my niece.”

His neighbor nods and purses her lips, as if she’s thinking this information over.

“I don’t think I ever introduced myself,” she says finally, holding out her hand. “I’m Mary. Feel free to come and knock upstairs, if you ever need me.”

*

He’s shrugged on his jacket and is grabbing his keys when Emma pokes her head over the back of his favorite chair and asks, “Where are you going?”

John stares at her, caught completely off-guard. It was the third Thursday of the month. John liked to go see Sherlock these Thursdays.

“Oh, I’m—” John wonders frantically if he should lie. Or take Emma with him. Harry and Sherlock are buried in completely different graveyards, and it hits John like a wave that he probably should have taken Emma to visit her mother sometime over the course of the last month and a half. “We’re out of milk. I’m just going to pop down to Sainsbury’s, it’s a block down the street. Will you be alright by yourself for ten minutes?”

Emma hugs her giraffe to her tightly and raises her chin as if in defiance. “Yes.”

John smiles, his teeth grit together. He practically runs to Sainsbury’s.

He does not go to visit Sherlock that day.

*

“The detective said that I couldn’t see my mum because she looked scary,” Emma says one day, completely out of the blue. “But I keep thinking it’s because she’s hiding. Like a secret.”

*

One week after Emma utters those words, John spots Sherlock in a bookstore.

It’s not _Sherlock,_ of course, it’s a very frustrated looking man behind the counter telling the customer in a posh baritone that nobody gives a damn about the difference between first and second editions. He’s dressed as a uni student – though surely he’s older than a uni student, _surely –_ and has to adjust his glasses every other sentence, they keep sliding down his nose.

John watches him from his corner whenever he thinks he can chance it. His heart’s sped up. He has half a mind to go and talk to him. He wants—he wants—

He takes the parenting book he’s been mulling over to the other cashier. He’s an adult, for Christ’s sake, and – for better or for worse – something of a father. He’s not going to go chatting up booksellers ten years younger than he is because they might help him recapture something he never truly had.

*

He’s wrong, of course.                                                                                 

“As ever, John, you _see_ but you don’t _observe._ ”


	2. Chapter 2

It had taken the better part of three hours to coax Emma into the bathtub, so he’s more than a bit peeved when the doorbell rings. He lets the stranger wait a while and scrubs at the back of Emma’s neck with a washcloth, her small nose wrinkling in distaste as he does so. He’s half-resolved to simply not answering – he never gets any important visitors – when Emma cocks her head to one side and asks, “Aren’t you going to get that?”

Jesus Christ, it’s like having a life coach. He can’t imagine what his younger self would say if he saw him now, taking instruction on how to be a functioning adult from an eight-year-old.

John pours water over Emma’s head before answering, rinsing the shampoo out of her hair. “Yes, I am. But you have to stay in here until your hands are all shriveled up like raisins, alright?”

Emma pulls her hands from the water to look at them.

“See? You’re not nearly there yet.”

Emma gives a small upward puff to blow her wet bangs off her forehead. “I _know.”_

John lifts them away and tucks the longest piece behind her ear for her. “I’ll be right back.”

His cuffs are drenched, even though he had rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, and he has a wet spot on his stomach and soap suds behind his ear. He wipes at the suds and rolls his sleeves down, and, thinking that the visitor may be a locked out Mary, he takes a moment to straighten his hair.

God, it’d be vile if it wasn’t anybody he knew well. It does seem a bit pervy, out of context, an uncle giving his niece a bath. But he’d found out two nights ago that when she was showering, all she was doing was standing in the bathroom fully clothed while watching the water run, and forcing her into the tub under his supervision seemed to be the only solution.

What he wishes he could do, strangely enough, is call Clara. He hasn’t got any idea where she’s living nowadays, and he’s not keen on talking to her after her conduct at the funeral, but Clara seems like the only person who might have an answer to any of his questions – does Emma know how to shower? How old are kids when they usually learn these things? What does she like to eat? Is she _interested_ in anything?

Last time he’d seen her, two Christmases ago, she’d known everything there was to know about dinosaurs. She’d spent forty minutes telling John about the various inaccuracies of _The Land Before Time_ and how dinosaurs probably don’t look like we think they do, because we imagine them without muscle, only skin and bone. John had to hide the Barbie doll he bought her and go out and get a brontosaurus figurine one hour before dinner.

When John had asked her about dinosaurs last week, she had sighed and made a volcano out of her rice.

Yesterday, while Emma was up in her room, John had crept across the living room to peer into her backpack and extricate her lunchbox and a few folders. Leaving the lunchbox on the counter, he’d opened up the top folder – one with a dragon design on it – and perused its contents.

Emma’s work was sparse, if not nonexistent. She’d crumpled up the spelling pages that identified themselves as homework, written ‘0’ for every answer on an addition page, and circled every option on a multiple choice page about grammar. There was a ‘getting to know’ you page at the very back of the folder, presumably from her first day, that’d covered in questions like “what’s your name?” “what do you like people to call you?” and “do you have any pets?”. She’d filled out these answers normally, but the paper had a strange, heavy texture about it, and the back of it felt tacky against his fingers. John turned it over, to see.

The back of the page contained nothing but a large, square box, with the prompt “Draw your family!” up at the top. Emma had taken a crayon and filled every inch of it black.

The person at the door leans on the bell. The loud buzz cuts through the flat and John rolls his eyes as he makes his way down the hall to the outer door.

It’s like dying, which is the funny thing. The only other time he felt this way is when he thought he was shot through the shoulder and almost dead.

“I thought you were about to come and talk to me in the bookstore yesterday.”

He’s still got his hand on the doorknob. He grips it so tightly that his knuckles turn white; his fingers start to cramp but he can’t let go of it; he wants to rip it out of the wood and hurl it out into the street.

“What are you doing?”

The sheer force of will it takes to utter those words is almost exhausting. He’s looking at Sherlock Holmes. He’s looking at _Sherlock Holmes._

“Let me in, will you? It’s pissing buckets. And I hope you don’t plan on keeping that mustache. It’s hideous.”

Rainwater drips off of one of his curls, slides down the line of his nose and comes to rest on his lips, where he licks it away. John’s almost nauseous.

“The glasses were the dead giveaway,” he says, stepping past John and into the entryway, “they were too big, it was painfully obvious I wasn’t used to wearing them – but I shouldn’t have worried, as ever, John, you see but you don’t—”

“Get out.”

Sherlock’s on his way to another sentence before he realizes what John’s said. He stops short, and everything goes eerily quiet save the steady dripping of water from Sherlock’s Belstaff to the floor. John looks down and he sees that Sherlock’s hands are trembling slightly, fingers twitching, as though they’re barely managing to keep themselves from reaching out. “What?”

_“Get out of my flat.”_

Sherlock tries to smile, but can’t manage it for all the tightness in his face. “Now, John, I understand—you have a right to be angry with me—”

There’s a clatter from behind him and John turns around; he feels Sherlock crane his neck to look too, over his shoulder. Through the door, John spots Emma, wrapped in her ducky robe with the hood pulled low over her eyes. When she sees John looking at her, she darts back around the corner to hide in the kitchen. John, trying to regain control of himself, balls his right hand into a tight fist and walks back towards his flat. He can hear the words in his head – _‘young lady, get back in that tub this instant’ –_ but he can’t say them, he can’t move his jaw, he can feel another body hovering close to his back, shoulders looming over his shoulders—

“Is that—”

“Nobody. It’s nobody.”

“You can hardly expect me to believe—”

John closes his eyes. “Emma. Harry’s daughter. Harry’s dead, if you hadn’t figured that out already.”

“John—”

God, his _name._ When people die you miss things you never used to notice. You tear yourself up because you’re never going to hear your name on their lips again. “Piss off, John, this isn’t about you. I can’t help myself. I love you, you’re my little brother.” You can estimate it, you can hear the echoes, but you can never get it quite right. It’s never going to be anywhere outside of your own head, and you figure it will fade with the rest of it; with your weekend adventures and what they wore in the morning and how they prepared eggs and what their hair exactly looked like, dripping with water that comes to rest on their plump upper lip.

“I’ve got other things to do.” There’s a machine inside him, working. Gears turning in his jaw, making it move. Three months ago, things would have been different. _He_ would have been different. But now his hand uncurls itself from its fist and come to rest on the edge of the door. It’s almost relaxed. It’s exhausted. The only thing the real John can think of is how the wet spot on his shirt is sticking to his stomach. “I have a kid.”

Sherlock’s eyes dart back and forth. “Granddaughter, more like.” He gestures towards his mouth, which appears pursed and too-small. “That’s what everybody’s thinking, you know, with the mus—”

John’s knuckles go white again on the door. He speaks through grit teeth. “Get _out.”_

He’d wished for Sherlock’s life back hundreds of times. He’d never once wished for Harry’s.

There are other things he should say. How he hates him, maybe, how he feels like he should hate him. How it’s not about Emma at all, it’s about—it’s about—it’s about how small his body looks, standing in that doorway. How Sherlock’s always been tall and bitter and forceful and how he should be shoving himself inside, how he should be making John shout at him, how he should initiate a physical fight. How John’s already thinking about shaving. How Sherlock shouldn’t just stand there. How his face looks thin and his shoulders and elbows look sharp. _Say something else,_ John thinks. _Say anything._

Sherlock stands and he watches, and he doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t move.

“Go,” John says, and it’s him. He’s regained a sense of his body and he’s moving. “Please, just… go.”

John does not bother to watch Sherlock’s retreating back. The second he turns to leave, John closes the door behind him.

Emma peeks out from her hiding place underneath the kitchen table. She looks at John with wide, enchanted eyes that look more engaged than John has ever seen them. She smiles, and there is an awed hush in her voice when she speaks. “Was that Sherlock Holmes?”

*

He bangs on Mary’s door. He’s shaking it within its frame but he doesn’t care, he doesn’t think he can reel himself back. He’s buzzing and his skin is too small.

Mary’s smile when she answers the door fades immediately. “Calm down, you’d think somebody was—What’s wrong?” Her hand reaches out and touches his shoulder. “Come in, you look ill.”

“No, I—could you just—could you watch Emma? I need somebody to watch Emma.”

“John, I really don’t… I mean, I _can…”_

“Please. Just for an hour. I just—”

“Of course. Of course I can. But do you really think—”

 _“God,_ thank you, the door’s open downstairs.”

He doesn’t even care that she’s watching him as he bolts back down to the entryway and out the door.

*

He stares at Sherlock’s grave for forty minutes, getting soaked.

“I can’t believe you,” he says. It’s easier to say to a headstone. “I can’t _believe_ you.”

*

When he gets home, Mary is reading a book at his kitchen table. Trevor lies asleep in her lap.

“Careful there,” she says, turning a page. “You’ll stain the hardwood.”

John looks down at himself, open-mouthed.

“Emma was fine, very compliant.” She shifts her grip on Trevor and dog-ears the page of her book before closing it over and standing up. “Bit of a change from this one. He’s like a windup toy. Goes nonstop until… well.” She bounces him a bit in her arms, as if that said it all. John forces a smile.

“I can’t thank you enough for this.”

Mary smiles. “Whenever you need me.” She starts to walk towards the door, and lays her hand on John’s upper arm as she passes by. John closes his eyes to rest in the warmth of it. “She’s going to be alright, you know. It’s hard right now, I know. But from here on out, it only gets easier.”

John can’t think of anything further from the truth.

Mary reaches behind John’s head, her knuckles brushing against the nape of his neck. His tag’s come untucked. She fixes it; then straightens his collar.

“There,” she says. “Now you’re perfect.”

*

When John goes to take a shower the next morning, he finds the tub full of frigid bathwater. There are two rubber ducks floating in it, bumping against each other. The water that has leaked out over the night has left a ring of dried, grimy soap on the ceramic five inches from the top. John reaches into the cold water to unplug the drain and decides to take a shower later.

He enters the kitchen to find Emma curled up at the kitchen table, knees drawn to her chest, backpack already on.

“You’re up early.” He hadn’t slept well. “Big day at school?”

She shakes her head.

“Do you want any breakfast? Cereal? I got the right kind this time.”

She shakes her head again. John decides not to push it.

He scrambles himself three eggs and spoons them onto a slice of toast, forgoing a plate. He takes his first bite and gets some down his front. He wipes at it and swears under his breath.

“Uncle John?”

“Hm?” He swallows his second bite too early and can feel it slide down his throat like a trap. Emma squirms on her chair and sinks her teeth into her knee, rocking back and forth. “Go ahead, you can ask me.”

Emma hovers on the border of indecision for another thirty seconds before coming out with it. “So Sherlock’s real? Really real? You lived with him and everything? Wasn’t he dead? Can anybody do that – come back like that? Are you going to see him again? Did you really do all those things – does he really have a skull?”

John’s hand shakes so badly he nearly drops his toast. He manages to keep it together, but he spills more egg down his front.

“I—I—” He swallows again, even though he doesn’t need to. “He does really have a skull.”

Emma shakes her hair down in front of her face. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” He tries to wipe the egg off his shirt and ends up making it worse. “It’s okay.”

*

The fifteenth comes and goes.

There is no cheque from Mycroft.

*

Sarah gives him his job back. Shame pools in his stomach as he explains, but there isn’t anything else to be done. He’s not going to _demand_ Mycroft treat him like a charity case and he’s not going to let himself be bossed around by someone just because they have money. Because he knows what Mycroft wants him to do, knew what he’d want him to do the moment he opened the door and saw Sherlock alive again.

He thinks he might be able to manage, on clinic work and his pension.

*

The babysitter he hires through an online service doesn’t look older than 16, has the word “fuck” tattooed on her knuckles and hasn’t brought anything with her except for a large stack of magazine. John stares at her in the doorway for a full minute.

She’s frustrated to be kept waiting so long. “You’re John Watson?”

“You’re… from the service?”

_“Duh.”_

John looks over his shoulder. Emma’s already looking at him, conveying an expression John would describe as “subdued terror.” It almost makes him laugh. John shrugs his shoulders, hoping that he looks apologetic and that Emma gets the message.

Emma shrugs back. John smiles at her.

He realizes he hasn’t got any idea what to tell a sitter.

“Just—have her in bed by… 8:30. It’s alright if she wants to stay up and wait for me.”

It’s as though he hasn’t even spoken. “You know, I like to take half of my money up front.”

John pays her. Rates have gone way up since Harry charged 20 pounds a day for the neighbours.

*

He runs up the stairs to get to Emma when he gets home. She’s sitting up in bed with the light on, waiting for him. It’s the oddest feeling, but John wants to hug her until she disappears. “How was the sitter?”

Emma shrugs. She has her giraffe nuzzled up close to her, and sitting in bed like this, it’s taller than she is. “She was okay.”

He’d thought about her the entire time that he was at work. He can’t believe he’d be so terrible, to leave her like that, to not know what to do. After being a soldier, there was never a worse feeling to him than not knowing what to do with his hands.

Well, almost the entire time. There was one instant where he’d thought that one of his patients had been—

He takes a few tentative steps further into the room and then settles on the end of the bed. “Just okay?”

“She set the fire alarm off twice making dinner. It was really loud.”

“I’m sorry, Emma. I’m really sorry.”

“It’s okay. You weren’t the one that did it.”

He never knew this, that kids could be so… black and white and logical. Fondness surges through the guilt and presses a sad smile into his cheeks. “I know. But I’m the one that left you with her. I’m not having her back; I thought about everyone else I could call all through work and it’ll be somebody I know next time.”

“Like Clara?”

God, he wishes he could get Clara for her. “I’m going to try Clara, but I’m not sure where she is at the moment. She might not pick up her phone.” Emma nods, then starts tracing a pattern into the bedspread. John sighs.  “Listen, I—I know I’m not doing the best job right now.” Is this something you’re supposed to discuss with eight year olds? Are they supposed to think that you’re always in control, or is that just an idea that they put in parenting books? He figures he might as well. She’s been nothing but frank and honest with him. Unlike— “If there’s something I can do,” he says, leaning up to press a kiss to her forehead, “just tell me, okay?”

She nods. Her whole body shifts with the motion.

He gets to the door before she says it. “Uncle John?” The bed is far too big for her, like she’s being swallowed by an ocean suspended on a bedframe. John smiles at her, hand on the light switch.

“Mum used to tell me stories. Before I went to sleep.”

 _Stories._ He could do stories. He steps back into the room. “Alright. What about, what kind?”

She grows suddenly self-conscious, pulling the blankets further up her chest and studying her lap as she picks at loose threads on the quilt. “The one about the aluminum crutch?”

All the air goes out of him. “Oh, ah. I—I don’t really like—”

“So they were true? Even that one? And the one with the secret code?”

John blinks. He fights against the fact that his first reaction is to think ‘ _why do they always ask about the crutch?’_ before realising. “Your mother… used to tell you stories… about me?” He doesn’t know what expression his face is trying to make but he forces it to stay neutral.

Emma beams. “She’d read them! From the laptop.”

John’s breathing is low and heavy.

“Will you tell it? The way mum did?”

John reaches over and puts his hand on her feet. She wiggles them back and forth, squirming, and gives John an encouraging smile.

“I can tell it the way _I_ tell it,” he says, “and you can help me, when I don’t do it right. Is that good?”

She nods. “That’s good.”

It’s surprisingly easy, talking about Sherlock. He hadn’t even realised how much he’d been dying to do it—the different clients, how rude he was to them, the way he looked with his coat collar turned up and how John’d sometimes come home to a flat with cigarette smoke coating the ceiling, how they’d stay up late looking at photographs and depositions and what it felt like to dart down an alley after a suspect. He was a good storyteller, too—better than he was at writing, at least; he was always a terrible typist and everything he wrote sounded more stilted than he meant it to—and Emma was the perfect audience, gasping and clapping like she’d never heard them before.

But she had, and she was more meticulous about detail than Sherlock was. “There were four cups, not ‘ _a few’_ ” and “No, Detective Lestrade told you that you had to wait first, but you went anyway” and “You forgot to say that you were wearing the coat you got for Christmas."

And then—“And mum and Clara?”

And up until this point, John had felt strangely lost in it: he’d climbed back down into somewhere he forgot leaving and was simply reveling in how he’d managed not to miss it. You just accept things, when you assume you’ll never get them back, but this—he could hear the sounds Sherlock made when he’d had an idea, see the way his shoulders moved beneath his shirts when he was explaining something, picture the tattered end of the sleeve of his blue robe. But this...

“What about mum and Clara?”

Emma raises her eyebrows at him and lets her jaw fall open like she’s shocked by his complete and utter stupidity. “They come to the dinner! Mummy solves the next clue!”

John’s heart is in his throat before he’s even digested what she’s said. “You’re right, you’re right. Sorry. I thought that came later.”

He pinches his nose and closes his eyes and then fake-yawns to make like he’s tired. “Obviously I’ve had a bit of a long day. I’m getting sleepy. Good thing you were paying attention. I couldn’t forget something big like that.”

Emma’s other prominent objection comes right before the end. With this, she interrupts him outright, sighing in exasperation and crossing her arms. “You’re making Sherlock _so_ important.”

John feels his ears turn pink as he’s wrenched out of the story again. He’s forgotten that he’s angry and that he doesn’t want to speak to Sherlock again. “But he is important. He’s the story.”

Emma’s incensed. _“You’re_ the story!”

“No I’m not.” He watches her face, uncomprehending. Could she have it mixed up? Could she think that he’s Sherlock and that Sherlock’s his—

“But _you’re_ the one that tackles Mr. Barnes and arrests him!”

“The only reason we were there in the first place was—”

“Y _ou’re_ the one that hit the bad actor over the head!”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know—I mean, if Sherlock hadn’t—”

“And you’re the one who shot the bad dog at Dartmoor.”

“Yes, but it was the gas that was really dangerous, the dog was just—”

“And you knew where to go in the case with the secret codes, and you grabbed the man at the pool, and you saved Sherlock in the plane—planetari—the space place—”

“I mean, when you put it like that, but if Sherlock hadn’t—”

“ _And_ you killed the cabbie in the case with the pink lady!”

John’s about to protest again when he halts. “How do you know that?”

Emma tucks her chin to her chest and shields her face with her hair. John puts his hand on her arm to reassure her but she yanks the blankets up to her eyes all the same.

“It’s okay, I’m not angry. It’s just that that’s a _secret,_ I’ve never told anybody.”

She lowers the blanket, but keeps it tucked under her arm and her eyes averted. “Mummy told me. She said that it was a secret, but she could guess.”

A cold stone appears in his stomach that he should be used to by now. He swallows, strokes Emma’s hair. When he speaks his voice sounds distorted and he can’t help it. “Would you mind if we finished the story tomorrow?”

Emma shakes her head. John stands, posture perfect, and turns off the bedside lamp. “Have pleasant dreams,” he says.

“You too,” she says. Her voice is so small in the dark room.

He hasn’t cried about his sister, not yet, he hadn’t really planned to. With so much else going on, the loss of his not-so-beloved sibling seemed… tertiary. An inconvenience, even. But now, he can’t even get down the hall, his chest tightening as he closes the door behind him so he can lean against it – and he’s crying, pinching the bridge of his nose to try and stop it, because this is his older sister, the one he grew up with. The one he took care of, the one with scabs on her knees and a girlfriend at fifteen that John had to keep a secret, the one that made him scrambled eggs at one in the morning after the end of his first relationship and the one that once knocked over their Christmas tree and blamed it on the cat. Everything, _everything –_ their growing apart, the way they fought over her drinking, the way she seemed determined to destroy every close relationship she ever had, how she could see if he was lying in an instant – he’d never known, he’d never _known,_ she used to tell her daughter stories, her hero brother and his friend the detective, and now he can’t do anything about it—

He stops himself again, forcing it, this time. Pressing his thumb firmly against one eye and the rest of his fingers against the other. Get it together, Watson. Jesus Christ. It’s death. It happens every day.

*

Emma’s very quiet the next morning. John’s worried something’s wrong, that he messed up again, but then she says, “Sorry if I made you sad by being mean about Sherlock. I think he’s important too.”

 _“Emma.”_ John crouches down next to her chair so that she can be on eye level with him. “I’m not upset. I’m flattered. That’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me.”

“I thought you were mad, ’cause you stopped telling the story.”

“No, I wasn’t mad. I was tired. I haven’t thought about any of that in a long time.”

John reaches out and puts his hand on her shoulder. At first, she doesn’t respond, and John’s just worrying that he’s done the wrong thing again when Emma jumps up and throws her arms around John’s shoulders. She buries her face in his neck.

“You’re a superhero.”

John hugs her back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't imagine an apology that would be sufficient for anyone that I've kept waiting on this, but I do hope you'll forgive me anyway.


End file.
